The family Chloropidae, sometimes referred to as grass- or
frit-flies, contains small, usually yellowish or blackish acalypterate flies
found worldwide. Over 2,000 species have been described in more than 160
genera. Adults of living forms occur in grasses, flowers, and some (the
"eye gnats") are attracted to the eyes and open wounds of humans and
animals. Larvae are mostly saprophagous or
phytophagous, feeding in a variety of habits including cereals and grasses,
insect frass, decaying plant matter, and fungi. Others are predaceous or
parasitic.

In addition to the determined taxa listed here, Kulicka in Kosmowska-Ceranowicz
(1990) and Kulicka (1993) listed an undetermined
specimen of this family from Baltic amber in collection of the Museum of the
Earth, Warsaw, and Poinar (1992) recorded material from the Oligocene/ Miocene
amber of the Dominican Republic and the Miocene amber of Chiapas, Mexico.

The report of an undetermined example of this family from
the Upper Cretaceous Canadian amber (McAlpine & Martin 1969) was later
refuted in a communication from McAlpine to E.P. Narchuk
(Kovalev (1979). Whalley’s (1981) record of material of what may be the oldest representative of the family from the Lower Cretaceous amber of Lebanon [and repeated by Poinar (1992)] is actually a the hybotid Phaetempis Grimaldi & Cumming, 1999. Zlobin (2007) examined Hippelatesbrodei Cockerell and considered it as incertaesedis.